Friedrich August von Hayek

ROAD TO SLAVERY

Monograph

© Translation by M.B. Gnedovsky, 1990

[First publication: "Questions of Philosophy", 1990--1991]

Editor Ts.S. Ginsburg

Jr. editor A.Ya. Filimonova

Proofreaders by A. S. Rogozin

Hayek F.A. von, The Road to Serfdom: Trans. from English / Preface N.Ya. Petrakova. - M.: "Economy", 1992. - 176 p.

Isbn 5--282--01501--3

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Delivered for recruitment on 03/28/91. Signed for publication on 06/04/91.

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Publishing house "Economy", 121864, Moscow, G-59, Berezhkovskaya embankment, 6

Socialists of all parties

Freedom, whatever it may be, is lost,

usually gradually.

Preface

When a social scientist writes a political book, it is his duty to say so directly. This is a political book, and I do not want to pretend that it is about something else, although I could designate its genre with some more refined term, say, a social-philosophical essay. However, whatever the title of the book, everything I write in it flows from my commitment to certain fundamental values. And it seems to me that I fulfilled my other equally important duty, having fully clarified in the book itself what the values ​​are on which all the judgments expressed in it are based.

It remains to be added that, although this is a political book, I am absolutely sure that the beliefs expressed in it are not an expression of my personal interests. I see no reason why a society of the type which I apparently prefer would give me any privilege over the majority of my fellow citizens. Indeed, as my socialist colleagues argue, I, as an economist, would occupy a much more prominent place in the society I oppose (if, of course, I could accept their views). I am equally confident that my disagreement with these views is not a consequence of my upbringing, since it was precisely them that I adhered to at a young age and it was they that forced me to devote myself to professional studies in economics. For those who, as is now customary, are ready to see selfish motives in any presentation of a political position, let me add that I have every reason not to write or publish this book. It will no doubt "hurt many with whom I would like to remain friendly. Because of it I have had to put aside other work, which I, by and large, consider more important and feel better prepared for. Finally, it will hurt perception of the results of my own research activities, to which I feel a genuine inclination.

If, despite this, I still considered the publication of this book my duty, it was only because of the strange and fraught with unpredictable consequences of the situation (hardly noticeable to the general public) that has now developed in discussions about future economic policy. The fact is that most economists have recently been drawn into military developments and have become mute due to the official position they occupy. As a result, public opinion on these issues today is formed mainly by amateurs, those who like to fish in troubled waters or sell on the cheap a universal remedy for all diseases. In these circumstances, anyone who still has time for literary work hardly has the right to keep to himself fears that, observing modern trends, many share, but cannot express. In other circumstances, I would gladly leave the debate about national policy to people who are more authoritative and more knowledgeable in this matter.

The main provisions of this book were first briefly summarized in the article “Freedom and the Economic System,” published in April 1938 in the journal Contemporary Review, and in 1939 reprinted in an expanded version in one of the socio-political brochures published under edited by prof. G.D. Gideons University of Chicago Press. I thank the publishers of both of these publications for permission to reprint some excerpts from them.

F. A. Hayek

The most annoying thing about these studies is that

which reveal the genealogy of ideas.

Lord Acton

Modern events differ from historical events in that we do not know where they lead. Looking back, we can understand past events by tracing and assessing their consequences. But current history is not history for us. It is directed into the unknown, and we almost never can say what awaits us ahead. Everything would be different if we had the opportunity to live the same events a second time, knowing in advance what their result would be. We would then look at things with completely different eyes, and in what we barely notice now, we would see a harbinger of future changes. Perhaps it is for the best that such experience is closed to man, that he does not know the laws that govern history.

And yet, although history does not literally repeat itself and, on the other hand, no development of events is inevitable, we can learn from the past to prevent the repetition of some processes. You don't have to be a prophet to recognize the impending danger. Sometimes a combination of experience and interest suddenly allows one person to see things from an angle that others do not yet see.

The following pages are the result of my personal experience. The fact is that I managed to live through the same period twice, at least twice to observe a very similar evolution of ideas. Such an experience is unlikely to be available to a person who lives all the time in one country, but if you live for a long time in different countries, then under certain circumstances it turns out to be achievable. The fact is that the thinking of most civilized nations is subject to basically the same influences, but they manifest themselves at different times and at different speeds. Therefore, when moving from one country to another, you can sometimes witness the same stage of intellectual development twice. At the same time, feelings become strangely aggravated. When you hear for the second time opinions or calls that you already heard twenty or twenty-five years ago, they acquire a second meaning, are perceived as symptoms of a certain tendency, as signs indicating, if not inevitability, then at least the possibility of the same thing as for the first time, developments.

Perhaps the time has come to tell the truth, no matter how bitter it may seem: the country whose fate we risk repeating is Germany. True, the danger is not yet at the door, and the situation in England and the USA is still quite far from what we have seen in recent years in Germany. But although we still have a long way to go, we must be aware that with every step it will be more and more difficult to go back. And if, by and large, we are the masters of our destiny, then in a specific situation we act as hostages of ideas that we ourselves created. Only by recognizing the danger in time can we hope to cope with it.

Modern England and the USA are not like Hitler's Germany as we came to know it during this war. But anyone who begins to study the history of social thought is unlikely to ignore the by no means superficial similarity between the development of ideas that took place in Germany during and after the First World War, and the current trends that have spread in democratic countries. Here today the same determination is maturing to preserve the organizational structures created in the country for defense purposes in order to use them subsequently for peaceful creation. The same contempt for nineteenth-century liberalism, the same hypocritical “realism,” the same fatalistic readiness to accept “inevitable trends” develop here. And at least nine out of every ten lessons that our vociferous reformers urge us to learn from this war are exactly the same lessons that the Germans learned from the last war and from which the Nazi system was created. More than once in this book we will have the opportunity to make sure that in many other respects we are following in the footsteps of Germany, lagging behind it by fifteen to twenty-five years. People don’t like to remember this, but not much has passed since the progressives looked to the socialist policies of Germany as an example to follow, just as in recent times all the eyes of the progressives were fixed on Sweden. And if we delve further into the past, we cannot help but remember how deeply German politics and ideology influenced the ideals of an entire generation of British and partly Americans on the eve of the First World War.

The author spent more than half of his adult life in his homeland, Austria, in close contact with the German intellectual environment, and the second half in the USA and England. During this second period, the conviction constantly grew in him that the forces that destroyed freedom in Germany were also at work here, at least in part, and the nature and sources of the danger were less understood here than in their time in Germany. Here they still have not seen in full the tragedy that occurred in Germany, where people of good will, considered a model and aroused admiration in democratic countries, opened the way to forces that now embody everything we hate most. Our chances of avoiding such a fate depend on our sobriety, on our willingness to question the hopes and aspirations we cultivate today and to reject them if they contain danger. In the meantime, everything suggests that we lack the intellectual courage necessary to admit our errors. We still do not want to see that the rise of fascism and Nazism was not a reaction to the socialist trends of the previous period, but an inevitable continuation and development of these trends. Many do not want to acknowledge this fact even after the similarities between the worst manifestations of the regimes in communist Russia and fascist Germany have become clearer. As a result, many, rejecting Nazism as an ideology and sincerely not accepting any of its manifestations, are guided in their activities by ideals, the implementation of which opens a direct path to the tyranny they hate.

Any parallels between the development paths of different countries are, of course, deceptive. But my arguments are based not only on such parallels. Nor do I insist on the inevitability of one path or another. (If things were so fatal, there would be no point in writing all this.) I argue that certain tendencies can be curbed if people are made to understand in time where their efforts are really directed. Until recently, however, there was little hope of being heard. Now, in my opinion, the moment is ripe for a serious discussion of this entire problem as a whole. And it’s not just that more and more people are recognizing its seriousness today; There are also additional reasons that force us to face the truth.

Some may say that now is not the time to raise an issue that causes such a sharp clash of opinions. But the socialism we are talking about here is not a party issue, and what we are discussing has nothing to do with the discussions that go on between political parties.* That some groups want more socialism and others less, that some call for it based on the interests of one part of society, and others - another - all this does not touch the essence of the matter. It so happened that people who have the opportunity to influence the course of development of the country are all socialists to one degree or another. That is why it has become unfashionable to emphasize adherence to socialist convictions, because this fact has become universal and obvious. Hardly anyone doubts that we must move towards socialism, and all disputes concern only the details of such a movement, the need to take into account the interests of certain groups.

We are moving in this direction because such is the will of the majority, such is the prevailing sentiment. But there were and are no objective factors making the movement towards socialism inevitable. (We will touch upon the myth of the “inevitability” of planning below.) The main question is where this movement will lead us. And if the people whose conviction is the mainstay of this movement begin to share the doubts that the minority is expressing today, will they not recoil in horror from the dream that has agitated minds for half a century, will they not abandon it? Where the dreams of our entire generation will take us is a question that must be decided not by any one party, but by each of us. Can one imagine a great tragedy if, while trying to consciously resolve the issue of the future and focusing on high ideals, we unwittingly create in reality the complete opposite of what we are striving for?

There is another pressing reason that forces us today to seriously think about what forces gave birth to National Socialism. This way we can better understand what kind of enemy we are fighting against. There is hardly any need to prove that we still do not know well what the positive ideals that we defend in this war are. We know that we defend the freedom to shape our lives according to our own ideas. This is a lot, but not all. This is not enough to maintain firm convictions when confronted with an enemy who uses propaganda as one of the main types of weapons, not only crude, but sometimes very subtle. And this will be all the more insufficient when, after victory, we are faced with the need to confront the consequences of this propaganda, which, undoubtedly, will make themselves felt for a long time both in the Axis countries themselves and in other states that are under its influence. In this way, we will neither be able to convince others to fight on our side out of solidarity with our ideals, nor build a new world after victory, obviously safe and free.

This is unfortunate, but it is a fact: the entire experience of interaction of democratic countries with dictatorial regimes in the pre-war period, as well as subsequently their attempts to conduct their own propaganda and formulate the objectives of the war, revealed an internal vagueness, uncertainty of their own goals, which can only be explained by the lack of clarity of ideals and misunderstanding of nature the deep differences that exist between them and their enemy. We misled ourselves, because, on the one hand, we believed in the sincerity of the enemy’s declarations, and on the other hand, we refused to believe that the enemy sincerely professed some of the beliefs that we also profess. Were not both parties of the left and right deceived into believing that the National Socialists were in defense of capitalism and opposed to socialism in all its forms? Haven’t we been offered one or another element of the Hitlerite system as a model, as if they were not an integral part of a single whole and could be painlessly and safely combined with the forms of life of a free society, the guardian of which we would like to stand? We made many very dangerous mistakes both before and after the start of the war simply because we did not properly understand our enemy. It seems that we simply do not want to understand how totalitarianism arose, because this understanding threatens to destroy some illusions dear to our hearts.

We will not be able to successfully interact with the Germans until we understand what ideas they are now driven by and what the origin of these ideas is. Arguments about the internal depravity of the Germans as a nation, which can be heard quite often lately, do not stand up to criticism and do not sound very convincing even to those who put them forward. Not to mention the fact that they discredit a whole galaxy of English thinkers who, over the last century, have constantly turned to German thought and drawn from it all the best (though not only the best). Let us remember, for example, that when John Stuart Mill wrote his brilliant essay “On Liberty” eighty years ago, he was inspired primarily by the ideas of two Germans - Goethe and Wilhelm von Humboldt. [For those who doubt this, I can recommend turning to the testimony of Lord Morley, who in his “Memoirs” calls it “generally accepted” that “the main ideas of the essay “0 Freedom” are not original, but came to us from Germany.” ] On the other hand, the two most influential forerunners of the ideas of National Socialism were a Scot and an Englishman - Thomas Carlyle and Houston Stewart Chamberlain. In a word, such arguments do no credit to their authors, for, as is easy to see, they represent a very crude modification of German racial theories.

The problem is not why the Germans are vicious (perhaps they themselves are no better or worse than other nations), but what are the conditions due to which, over the past seventy years, certain ideas have gained strength and become dominant in German society, and why certain people came to power in Germany as a result of this. And if we feel hatred simply for everything German, and not for these ideas that have taken possession of the minds of the Germans today, we are unlikely to understand from which side the real danger threatens us. Such an attitude is most often just an attempt to escape from reality, to close one’s eyes to processes that are by no means taking place only in Germany, an attempt that is explained by the unwillingness to reconsider ideas borrowed from the Germans and misleading us no less than the Germans themselves. Reducing Nazism to the depravity of the German nation is doubly dangerous, because under this pretext it is easy to impose on us the very institutions that are the real cause of this depravity.

The interpretation of events in Germany and Italy offered in this book differs significantly from the views on these events expressed by the majority of foreign observers and political emigrants from these countries. And if my point of view is correct, then it will at the same time explain why emigrants and correspondents of English and American newspapers, most of them professing socialist views, cannot see these events in their true form. The superficial and ultimately incorrect theory, which reduces National Socialism to a mere reaction deliberately provoked by groups whose privileges and interests were threatened by the advance of Socialism, finds support among all who at one time actively participated in the ideological movement that ended in the victory of National Socialism, but at some point he came into conflict with the Nazis and was forced to leave his country. But the fact that these people constituted the only significant opposition to Nazism only means that, in a broad sense, almost all Germans became socialists and that liberalism in its original understanding completely gave way to socialism. I will try to show that the conflict between the "left" forces and the "right" National Socialists in Germany is an inevitable conflict that always arises between rival socialist factions. And if my point of view is correct, then it follows that socialist emigrants who continue to adhere to their convictions are in fact helping, albeit with the best intentions, to put the country that gave them refuge on the path traversed by Germany.

I know that many of my English friends are shocked by the semi-fascist views often expressed by German refugees, who by their convictions are undoubted socialists. The British tend to explain this by the German origin of the emigrants, but in fact the reason is their socialist views. They simply had the opportunity to advance in the development of their views several steps further than the English or American socialists. Of course, the German socialists received significant support in their homeland due to the peculiarities of the Prussian tradition. The internal kinship between Prussianism and socialism, which were a source of national pride in Germany, only emphasizes my main idea. [A certain kinship between socialism and the organization of the Prussian state is undeniable. It was already recognized by the first French socialists. Long before the ideal of running a whole country on the model of running a factory began to inspire nineteenth-century socialists, the Prussian poet Novalis complained that “no country was ever governed so much on the model of a factory as Prussia after the death of Frederick William” (see Novalis . Glauben und Liebe, oder der Konig und die Konigin, 1798).] But it would be a mistake to believe that the national spirit, and not socialism, led to the development of the totalitarian regime in Germany. For it is not Prussianism at all, but the dominance of socialist beliefs that unites Germany with Italy and Russia. And National Socialism was born not from the privileged classes, where Prussian traditions reigned, but from the masses of the people.

Road to slavery

Socialists of all parties

Preface

Freedom, whatever it may be, is usually lost gradually.

When a social scientist writes a political book, it is his duty to say so directly. This is a political book, and I do not want to pretend that it is about something else, although I could designate its genre with some more refined term, say, a socio-philosophical essay. However, whatever the title of the book, everything I write in it flows from my commitment to certain fundamental values. And it seems to me that I fulfilled my other equally important duty, having fully clarified in the book itself what the values ​​are on which all the judgments expressed in it are based.

It remains to be added that, although this is a political book, I am absolutely sure that the beliefs expressed in it are not an expression of my personal interests. I see no reason why a society of the type I obviously prefer would give me any privileges over the majority of my fellow citizens. Indeed, as my socialist colleagues argue, I, as an economist, would occupy a much more prominent place in the society I oppose (if, of course, I could accept their views). I am equally confident that my disagreement with these views is not a consequence of my upbringing, since it was precisely them that I adhered to at a young age and it was they that forced me to devote myself to professional studies in economics. For those who, as is now customary, are ready to see selfish motives in any presentation of a political position, let me add that I have every reason not to write or publish this book. It will no doubt offend many with whom I would like to remain on friendly terms. Because of her, I had to postpone other work, which I generally consider more important and feel better prepared for. Finally, it will damage the perception of the results of my research activities, in the proper sense, to which I feel a real inclination.

If, despite this, I still considered the publication of this book my duty, it was only because of the strange and fraught with unpredictable consequences of the situation (hardly noticeable to the general public) that has now developed in discussions about future economic policy. The fact is that most economists have recently been drawn into military developments and have become mute due to the official position they occupy. As a result, public opinion on these issues today is formed mainly by amateurs, those who like to fish in troubled waters or sell on the cheap a universal remedy for all diseases. In these circumstances, anyone who still has time for literary work hardly has the right to keep to himself fears that, observing modern trends, many share, but cannot express. In other circumstances, I would gladly leave the debate about national policy to people who are more authoritative and more knowledgeable in this matter.

The main provisions of this book were first summarized in the article “Freedom and the Economic System,” published in April 1938 in the journal Contemporary Review, and in 1939 reprinted in an expanded version in one of the “Socio-Political Pamphlets”, which published under the editorship of prof. G. D. Gideons University of Chicago Press. I thank the publishers of both of these publications for permission to reprint some excerpts from them.

F. A. Hayek

Introduction

Volta is most irritated by those studies that reveal the pedigree of ideas.

Lord Ekton

Modern events differ from historical events in that we do not know where they lead. Looking back, we can understand past events by tracing and assessing their consequences. But current history is not history for us. It is directed into the unknown, and we almost never can say what awaits us ahead. Everything would be different if we had the opportunity to live through the same events a second time, knowing in advance what their result would be. We would then look at things with completely different eyes, and in what we barely notice now, we would see a harbinger of future changes. Perhaps it is for the best that such experience is closed to man, that he does not know the laws that govern history.

And yet, although history does not literally repeat itself and, on the other hand, no development of events is inevitable, we can learn from the past in order to prevent the repetition of some processes. You don't have to be a prophet to recognize the impending danger. Sometimes a combination of experience and interest suddenly allows one person to see things from an angle that others do not yet see.

The following pages are the result of my personal experience. The fact is that I managed to live through the same period twice, at least twice to observe a very similar evolution of ideas. Such an experience is unlikely to be available to a person who lives all the time in one country, but if you live for a long time in different countries, then under certain circumstances it turns out to be achievable. The fact is that the thinking of most civilized nations is subject to basically the same influences, but they manifest themselves at different times and at different speeds. Therefore, when moving from one country to another, you can sometimes witness the same stage of intellectual development twice. At the same time, feelings become strangely aggravated. When you hear for the second time opinions or calls that you already heard twenty or twenty-five years ago, they acquire a second meaning, are perceived as symptoms of a certain trend, as signs indicating, if not inevitability, then, in any case, the possibility of the same. as the first time, the development of events.

Perhaps the time has come to tell the truth, no matter how bitter it may seem; The country whose fate we risk repeating is Germany. True, the danger is not yet at the threshold and the situation in England and the USA is still quite far from what we have observed in recent years in Germany. But, although we still have a long way to go, we must be aware that with each step it will be more and more difficult to go back. And if, by and large, we are the masters of our destiny, then in a specific situation we act as hostages of ideas that we ourselves created. Only by recognizing the danger in time can we hope to cope with it.

Modern England and the USA are not like Hitler's Germany as we came to know it during this war. But anyone who begins to study the history of social thought is unlikely to ignore the by no means superficial similarity between the development of ideas that took place in Germany during and after the First World War, and the current trends that have spread in democratic countries. Here today the same determination is maturing to preserve the organizational structures created in the country for defense purposes in order to use them subsequently for peaceful creation. Here the same contempt for nineteenth-century liberalism develops, the same hypocritical “realism,” the same fatalistic readiness to accept “inevitable trends.” And at least nine out of every ten lessons that our vociferous reformers urge us to learn from this war are exactly the same lessons that the Germans learned from the last war and from which the Nazi system was created. More than once in this book we will have the opportunity to make sure that in many other respects we are following in the footsteps of Germany, lagging behind it by fifteen to twenty-five years. People don’t like to remember this, but not many years have passed since progressives looked to the socialist policies of Germany as an example to follow, just as in recent times all the eyes of progressives were fixed on Sweden. And if we delve further into the past, we cannot help but remember how deeply German politics and ideology influenced the ideals of an entire generation of British and partly Americans on the eve of the First World War.

The author spent more than half of his adult life in his homeland, Austria, in close contact with the German intellectual environment, and the second half in the USA and England. During this second period, the conviction gradually grew in him that the forces that destroyed freedom in Germany were also at work here, at least in part, and the nature and sources of the danger were less understood here than in their time in Germany. Here they still have not seen in full the tragedy that occurred in Germany, where people of good will, considered a model and aroused admiration in democratic countries, opened the way to forces that now embody everything we hate most. Our chances of avoiding such a fate depend on our sobriety, on our willingness to question the hopes and aspirations we cultivate today and to reject them if they contain danger. In the meantime, everything suggests that we lack the intellectual courage necessary to admit our errors. We still do not want to see that the rise of fascism and Nazism was not a reaction to the socialist trends of the previous period, but an inevitable continuation and development of these trends. Many do not want to acknowledge this fact even after the similarities between the worst manifestations of the regimes in communist Russia and fascist Germany have become clearer. As a result, many, rejecting Nazism as an ideology and sincerely not accepting any of its manifestations, are guided in their activities by ideals, the implementation of which opens a direct path to the tyranny they hate.

Road to slavery

© Friedrich August von Hayek, 1944

© Translation. M. Gnedovsky, 2010

© Russian edition AST Publishers, 2010

With this book, written in my spare time in 1940–1943, when I was mostly working on the problems of pure economic theory, unexpectedly for me, my more than thirty years of work in a new field began. The first attempt to find a new direction was prompted by my irritation at the completely misinterpretation of the Nazi movement in British "progressive" circles. This irritation led me to write a note to the then Director of the London School of Economics, Sir William Beveridge, and then an article for the Contemporary Review for 1938, which I, at the request of Professor Harry D. Gideons, expanded for publication in his Public Policy Pamphlets and which, with great reluctance (discovering, that all my more competent British colleagues are occupied with the progress of hostilities) I have finally turned into this treatise. Despite the completely unexpected success of The Road to Serfdom (and the initially planned American edition was even more successful than the British one), I was not satisfied with it for a long time. Although the book honestly states at the outset that it is political in nature, my colleagues in the social sciences managed to instill in me the feeling that I was doing the wrong thing, and I myself was confused about whether I was competent enough to go beyond the boundaries of economics in technical sense of the word. I will not talk here about the fury my book caused in certain circles, nor about the very curious difference between its reception in Great Britain and the United States - I wrote about this a couple of decades ago in the "Preface to the First American Pocket Edition " Just to give an idea of ​​the common reaction, I will mention an incident in which a well-known philosopher, whose name will remain anonymous, wrote to another philosopher a letter in which he reproached him for praising this scandalous book, which he himself “of course had not read.” ! Although I took great pains to remain within the framework of economics proper, I could not help thinking that the questions I had so carelessly raised were more complex and important than those of economic theory, and what was said in the original version of my work needed clarification and refinement . When I wrote this book, I was by no means sufficiently freed from the prejudices and prejudices that rule public opinion, and even less able to avoid the usual confusion of terms and concepts - something to which I subsequently began to be very careful. The discussion I have undertaken of the consequences of social policy cannot, of course, be complete without adequate consideration of the requirements and possibilities of a properly organized market order. It is the latter problem that my further studies in this area are devoted to. The first result of my efforts to explain the order of liberty was a major study, The Constitution of Liberty (1960), in which I attempted to substantially reformulate and more coherently express the classical doctrines of nineteenth-century liberalism. The realization that such a reformulation left a number of important questions unanswered prompted me to provide my own answers to them in the three-volume work Law, Legislation and Liberty, the first volume of which was published in 1973.

It seems to me that over the past twenty years I have managed to learn a lot about the problems raised in this book, although during this time I do not even think I have even re-read it. Re-reading it now to write this preface, I felt for the first time that I was not only not ashamed of it, but, on the contrary, proud of it - not least for the discoveries that allowed me to dedicate it to “socialists of all parties.” Indeed, although during this time I read a lot of things that I did not know when I wrote it, now I am often surprised how much of what I understood back then, at the very beginning of my journey, has been confirmed by further research. And although my later works will, I hope, prove more useful to professionals, I am ready without hesitation to recommend this old book to the general reader who wants a simple, not overloaded with technical details, introduction to a problem that, in my opinion, still remains one one of the most pressing and is still awaiting its decision.

The reader will probably ask whether this means that I am still prepared to defend all the main conclusions of this book, and the answer to this will be generally positive. The most significant caveat to be made is that terminology has changed over time, and therefore much of what is said here may be misunderstood. At the time I wrote The Road to Serfdom, socialism was clearly understood as the nationalization of the means of production and the centralized economic planning that nationalization makes possible and necessary. In this sense, today's Sweden, for example, is organized much less socialistically than Great Britain or Austria, although it is generally accepted that Sweden is a much more socialist country. This happened because socialism began to be understood primarily as a broad redistribution of income through taxation and the institutions of the “welfare state.” Under this brand of socialism, the phenomena discussed in this book occur more slowly, are not as straightforward, and are not fully expressed. I believe that ultimately this will lead to the same results, although the processes themselves will not be exactly the same as described in my book.

I am often credited with the conclusion that any movement towards socialism necessarily leads to totalitarianism. While this danger exists, that is not the point of the book. Its main point is that if we do not reconsider the principles of our policy, we will face the most unpleasant consequences, which were not at all the goal of most of the supporters of this policy.

Where, as it seems to me today, I was wrong was in underestimating the experience of communism in Russia. Perhaps this shortcoming could be forgiven, given that in those years when I wrote this, Russia was our ally in the war, and I had not yet completely gotten rid of the interventionist prejudices usual for that time, and therefore allowed myself to make many concessions - in my opinion today, unjustified. And I certainly didn't fully realize how bad things were in so many ways. For example, I considered the question I asked on p. 98: if “Hitler received unlimited power through strictly constitutional means<…>Will anyone dare to assert on this basis that the rule of law still exists in Germany?” However, it was later discovered that this is exactly what Professors Hans Kelsen and Harold J. Laski, and, following these influential authors, other socialist jurists and political scientists, argued. Be that as it may, further exploration of modern intellectual movements and modern institutions only increased my fears and anxieties. And the influence of socialist ideas, coupled with a naive faith in the good intentions of those in whose hands totalitarian power is concentrated, has increased significantly since I wrote The Road to Serfdom.

For a long time I was annoyed that the work, which I considered a pamphlet on the topic of the day, was more widely known than my actual scientific works. However, looking at what I have written through the prism of further studies on issues raised more than thirty years ago, I no longer feel annoyed. Although there is much in this book that I have not been able to demonstrate convincingly, it was a sincere attempt to find the truth, and I think I have made some discoveries that will benefit even those who disagree with me and help them avoid serious dangers.

The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich von Hayek is the most famous book by the 1974 Nobel laureate in economics. The work has been translated into more than 20 languages ​​and is considered one of the fundamental works of classical liberalism. The book had a huge impact on modern world politics and economics, became the basis for ideas for the abandonment of government regulation, and motivated a return to the classical model of a competitive market in the UK under and in the USA under Ronald Reagan.

main idea

The key idea of ​​the book "The Road to Serfdom" by Friedrich von Hayek is that planned regulation of the economy irreversibly leads to the growth of socialist ideology. And this, in turn, is the first significant step towards totalitarianism.

According to Hayek himself, Nazism and fascism reached their peak, becoming not a reaction to socialist trends, but their inevitable development.

The Austrian philosopher and economist was convinced that the rejection of economic freedoms in favor of central planning and collectivism leads to the deprivation of citizens not only of economic, but also of fundamental human freedoms. This is what he called “the road to slavery.”

The language of this book, despite its deep and complex content, is as simple as possible, which made it possible to translate it into several dozen languages, and residents of the entire planet could get acquainted with the ideas presented in it.

The book begins with the chapter “The Rejected Path,” in which Hayek gives his interpretation of recent historical events. The Road to Serfdom was published in 1944, as the World War was drawing to a close. The economist notes that this war was not only a military conflict in which almost all European countries were drawn into, but also an ideological struggle that took place within the framework of European civilization.

In The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich von Hayek argues that it is the denial of economic freedoms that leads to the formation of totalitarianism. By the end of the 19th century, trust in everything around the world was declining, which was caused by the desire for rapid change, the desire to destroy the old world to build a new one.

In the chapter “The Great Utopia,” the author describes how, under the banner of freedom, liberalism is being replaced by socialism in the world. Socialism, which Hayek initially considered a totalitarian movement, was the last attempt by the leaders of the French Revolution to bring it to an end by reorganizing and deliberately establishing “spiritual power.”

The book "The Road to Serfdom" by Friedrich von Hayek is divided into 15 chapters, each of which contains a fundamental statement. In the chapter “Individualism and Collectivism,” the author notes that the main problem of socialists is their belief in two incompatible things - organization and freedom. The term itself implies social protection of the population, equality and universal justice. But to achieve this ideal, the principles of a planned economy are applied.

Liberalism presupposes maximum avoidance of monopolies, the creation of a powerful legislative framework, the fight against corruption and fraud, ignorance and abuse.

According to Hayek, hatred of competition in any of its manifestations becomes common to all socialists.

Inevitable Planning

“Is planning inevitable?” — this is the question the author asks in the title of the fourth chapter. Hayek, in The Road to Serfdom, tries in detail to dismantle the claim that, due to the development of technology, the market was ultimately monopolized.

One of the key arguments for the need for planning is that because of monopolies, there are only two options: either transfer control of production to the government, or begin to control private monopolies.

According to Hayek, monopolies most often arise due to secret agreements and the direct support of large government officials, rather than being a consequence of any economic development. By eliminating this obstacle, the ideal conditions can be created to stimulate competition.

In the book “The Road to Serfdom,” Friedrich August von Hayek writes that the only way out in this situation is decentralization. Direct control must be abolished in favor of coordination. At most, this can be a system of measures that is necessary to coordinate the actions of other market participants.

In the chapter “Planning and Democracy,” Hayek notes that communism, collectivist systems, and fascism differ only in their final goals. What they have in common is the conscious organization of productive forces designed to perform a specific task. When starting to build your work according to a specific plan, it is important to distinguish between the needs of each individual, bringing them into a single system of values, which is subordinated to the state idea.

In The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich Hayek emphasizes that freedom is destroyed not by dictatorship itself, but by planning, which inevitably leads to dictatorship, since it becomes a necessary tool in a society of large-scale planning.

"Plan and Law"

The chapter "Plan and Law" is devoted to the differences that exist between the so-called "rules on the merits" adopted by planning authorities and formal law. The difference between them is exactly the same as in the rules of the road and orders about which way to move next.

In the first version, they are not related to specific people and goals, but in the second they are aimed at specific individuals, urging them to work for a given goal.

In The Road to Serfdom, von Hayek emphasizes that in order to control entire nations, a group of experts or a figure of some kind of commander-in-chief is needed, in whose hands is all power not related to democratic procedures. He comes to this conclusion in the chapter “Economic Control and Totalitarianism.”

He defines the loss of freedom of choice as situations when citizens, instead of specific monetary rewards, begin to receive public positions, distinctions and privileges. Economic life finds itself under total control, a person loses the opportunity to take even a step without publicly declaring his goals and intentions. All human life is under control. The same picture as in F. Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom” will be described by Orwell a few years later in the novel “1984”.

"Who will win?"

The essence of the chapter "Who wins?" is that, having lost private property, society is deprived of freedom. At the same time, real resources end up in the hands of the state or certain influential structures.

State production planning ultimately leads to total control over produced resources, the author notes, and this significantly limits market relations. When they reach a critical point, it becomes necessary to spread them until they become comprehensive.

All this leads to the fact that the individual loses his job, becoming dependent on the decisions of the authorities, who determine for him his place in society, where he will work and how to live. When the state assumes such functions, the only real form of power remains the power of officials or bureaucrats, that is, those people who control the coercive apparatus.

"Freedom and Security"

In this chapter of The Road to Serfdom, Hayek dwells on the problem of discipline that inevitably arises when the state is engaged in planning for an entire nation.

The author calls the army a social institution that illustrates a planned society. Employees and their responsibilities are determined by the command, and if there is a shortage of resources, then everyone ends up on a starvation diet. Economic security in this system is guaranteed exclusively to the military, but it is associated with the loss of personal freedom.

"Why do the worst come to power?"

The part of the book “The Road to Serfdom”, a summary of which is given in this article, entitled this rhetorical question, aroused the greatest interest among readers.

In this chapter, he tries to deal with the assertion that totalitarianism is not bad in itself, but it is spoiled by the historical figures who find themselves in charge. In his evidence and reflections, the author convinces the reader that this form of power is incompatible with the individual values ​​inherent in Western civilizations.

If the state or society is placed above the individual, then only those whose interests coincide with the collective remain its true members. A prerequisite for a dictator to remain in power is to search for an enemy (internal or external) and mercilessly fight against him.

Where there is a higher goal, where it is believed that all means are good to achieve it, there are no ethical rules and norms left. Cruelty for the sake of duty is justified; collectivists consider the values ​​and rights of the individual to be an obstacle to achieving the final result. Being devoted to their ideal, they are ready to commit even immoral and base acts. When the values ​​themselves are established by the leader, his subordinates are freed from moral convictions. The only thing required of them is to obey unquestioningly.

They are no longer afraid of dirty work; completing such tasks becomes a ticket to the top of the career ladder, to real power. People who retain internal ideals refuse to implement it; only the most unprincipled will do this.

Hayek refers to such organizations as the SD and SS, the Ministry of Propaganda and the Gestapo in the Third Reich, as well as similar services in Italy, where employees are primarily required to be cruel, the ability to intimidate, monitor and deceive.

"The End of Truth"

In the chapter “The End of Truth,” Hayek writes that coercion is not enough to serve a single goal. It is necessary for the people to believe in the importance and necessity of this goal. This can only be achieved through propaganda. It is necessary to replace concepts, because you have to convince not only of the importance of the goal itself, but also of the methods for achieving it.

The meaning of words in the context of state propaganda can change depending on external or internal circumstances. Criticism and doubts are suppressed. Total control over information is being introduced, which affects even completely apolitical areas.

The roots of Nazism

Hayek introduces the concept of the socialist roots of Nazism, demonstrating how close these doctrines are to each other.

For example, he cites the phrase and works of many National Socialist leaders who began their political careers as Marxists.

Ideal Goals

Hayek argues that in modern society, people often refuse to obey the laws of the market. He is even ready to sacrifice his freedoms just to gain effective economic security.

All this leads to short-sighted measures that only bring harm and lead to totalitarianism.

"What will the world be like after the war?"

This is the title of the last chapter of this book. On the eve of the coming end of the world war, the author notes the inadmissibility of the formation of supranational planning bodies.

According to the philosopher, international rule can become a prototype of an outright dictatorship, embodying the ideas of National Socialism on the largest scale. This form will lead to world tension. The main thing is to prevent developed nations from beginning to forcefully impose their ideas of morality on others. In this case, they risk finding themselves in a position where they themselves will have to decide on immoral acts, the author concludes.

Road to slavery

Socialists of all parties

Preface

Freedom, whatever it may be, is usually lost gradually.

David Hume

When a social scientist writes a political book, it is his duty to say so directly. This is a political book, and I do not want to pretend that it is about something else, although I could designate its genre with some more refined term, say, a socio-philosophical essay. However, whatever the title of the book, everything I write in it flows from my commitment to certain fundamental values. And it seems to me that I fulfilled my other equally important duty, having fully clarified in the book itself what the values ​​are on which all the judgments expressed in it are based.

It remains to be added that, although this is a political book, I am absolutely sure that the beliefs expressed in it are not an expression of my personal interests. I see no reason why a society of the type I obviously prefer would give me any privileges over the majority of my fellow citizens. Indeed, as my socialist colleagues argue, I, as an economist, would occupy a much more prominent place in the society I oppose (if, of course, I could accept their views). I am equally confident that my disagreement with these views is not a consequence of my upbringing, since it was precisely them that I adhered to at a young age and it was they that forced me to devote myself to professional studies in economics. For those who, as is now customary, are ready to see selfish motives in any presentation of a political position, let me add that I have every reason not to write or publish this book. It will no doubt offend many with whom I would like to remain on friendly terms. Because of her, I had to postpone other work, which I generally consider more important and feel better prepared for. Finally, it will damage the perception of the results of my research activities, in the proper sense, to which I feel a real inclination.

If, despite this, I still considered the publication of this book my duty, it was only because of the strange and fraught with unpredictable consequences of the situation (hardly noticeable to the general public) that has now developed in discussions about future economic policy. The fact is that most economists have recently been drawn into military developments and have become mute due to the official position they occupy. As a result, public opinion on these issues today is formed mainly by amateurs, those who like to fish in troubled waters or sell on the cheap a universal remedy for all diseases. In these circumstances, anyone who still has time for literary work hardly has the right to keep to himself fears that, observing modern trends, many share, but cannot express. In other circumstances, I would gladly leave the debate about national policy to people who are more authoritative and more knowledgeable in this matter.

The main provisions of this book were first summarized in the article “Freedom and the Economic System,” published in April 1938 in the journal Contemporary Review, and in 1939 reprinted in an expanded version in one of the “Socio-Political Pamphlets”, which published under the editorship of prof. G. D. Gideons University of Chicago Press. I thank the publishers of both of these publications for permission to reprint some excerpts from them.

F. A. Hayek

Introduction

Volta is most irritated by those studies that reveal the pedigree of ideas.

Lord Ekton

Modern events differ from historical events in that we do not know where they lead. Looking back, we can understand past events by tracing and assessing their consequences. But current history is not history for us. It is directed into the unknown, and we almost never can say what awaits us ahead. Everything would be different if we had the opportunity to live through the same events a second time, knowing in advance what their result would be. We would then look at things with completely different eyes, and in what we barely notice now, we would see a harbinger of future changes. Perhaps it is for the best that such experience is closed to man, that he does not know the laws that govern history.

And yet, although history does not literally repeat itself and, on the other hand, no development of events is inevitable, we can learn from the past in order to prevent the repetition of some processes. You don't have to be a prophet to recognize the impending danger. Sometimes a combination of experience and interest suddenly allows one person to see things from an angle that others do not yet see.

The following pages are the result of my personal experience. The fact is that I managed to live through the same period twice, at least twice to observe a very similar evolution of ideas. Such an experience is unlikely to be available to a person who lives all the time in one country, but if you live for a long time in different countries, then under certain circumstances it turns out to be achievable. The fact is that the thinking of most civilized nations is subject to basically the same influences, but they manifest themselves at different times and at different speeds. Therefore, when moving from one country to another, you can sometimes witness the same stage of intellectual development twice. At the same time, feelings become strangely aggravated. When you hear for the second time opinions or calls that you already heard twenty or twenty-five years ago, they acquire a second meaning, are perceived as symptoms of a certain trend, as signs indicating, if not inevitability, then, in any case, the possibility of the same. as the first time, the development of events.

Perhaps the time has come to tell the truth, no matter how bitter it may seem; The country whose fate we risk repeating is Germany. True, the danger is not yet at the threshold and the situation in England and the USA is still quite far from what we have observed in recent years in Germany. But, although we still have a long way to go, we must be aware that with each step it will be more and more difficult to go back. And if, by and large, we are the masters of our destiny, then in a specific situation we act as hostages of ideas that we ourselves created. Only by recognizing the danger in time can we hope to cope with it.

Modern England and the USA are not like Hitler's Germany as we came to know it during this war. But anyone who begins to study the history of social thought is unlikely to ignore the by no means superficial similarity between the development of ideas that took place in Germany during and after the First World War, and the current trends that have spread in democratic countries. Here today the same determination is maturing to preserve the organizational structures created in the country for defense purposes in order to use them subsequently for peaceful creation. Here the same contempt for nineteenth-century liberalism develops, the same hypocritical “realism,” the same fatalistic readiness to accept “inevitable trends.” And at least nine out of every ten lessons that our vociferous reformers urge us to learn from this war are exactly the same lessons that the Germans learned from the last war and from which the Nazi system was created. More than once in this book we will have the opportunity to make sure that in many other respects we are following in the footsteps of Germany, lagging behind it by fifteen to twenty-five years. People don’t like to remember this, but not many years have passed since progressives looked to the socialist policies of Germany as an example to follow, just as in recent times all the eyes of progressives were fixed on Sweden. And if we delve further into the past, we cannot help but remember how deeply German politics and ideology influenced the ideals of an entire generation of British and partly Americans on the eve of the First World War.

The author spent more than half of his adult life in his homeland, Austria, in close contact with the German intellectual environment, and the second half in the USA and England. During this second period, the conviction gradually grew in him that the forces that destroyed freedom in Germany were also at work here, at least in part, and the nature and sources of the danger were less understood here than in their time in Germany. Here they still have not seen in full the tragedy that occurred in Germany, where people of good will, considered a model and aroused admiration in democratic countries, opened the way to forces that now embody everything we hate most. Our chances of avoiding such a fate depend on our sobriety, on our willingness to question the hopes and aspirations we cultivate today and to reject them if they contain danger. In the meantime, everything suggests that we lack the intellectual courage necessary to admit our errors. We still do not want to see that the rise of fascism and Nazism was not a reaction to the socialist trends of the previous period, but an inevitable continuation and development of these trends. Many do not want to acknowledge this fact even after the similarities between the worst manifestations of the regimes in communist Russia and fascist Germany have become clearer. As a result, many, rejecting Nazism as an ideology and sincerely not accepting any of its manifestations, are guided in their activities by ideals, the implementation of which opens a direct path to the tyranny they hate.